The Open Access Series of Imaging Studies (OASIS) is a project aimed at making MRI data sets of the brain freely available to the scientific community. By compiling and freely distributing MRI data sets, we hope to facilitate future discoveries in basic and clinical neuroscience. OASIS is made available by Dr. Randy Buckner at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at Harvard University, the Neuroinformatics Research Group (NRG) at Washington University School of Medicine, and the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN). Support for the acquisition of this data and for data analysis was provided by NIH grants P50 AG05681, P01 AG03991, P20 MH071616, RR14075, RR 16594, U24 RR21382, the Alzheimer’s Association, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery Institute, and HHMI.

The OASIS website is powered by XNAT, an open source data management platform developed by the NRG and Dr. Randy Buckner. In addition to supporting data sharing projects, XNAT provides server and client tools for managing the operations of a neuroimaging enterprise. Support for the development and distribution of XNAT is provided by NIH grants U24 RR21382, P01 AG03991, P30 NS048056-03, the McDonnell Center for Higher Brain Function, and HHMI.

OASIS data are provided under an open access data use agreement (DUA). The DUA was modelled after the one used by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, though with less focus on supporting multiple data providers. Our DUA allows OASIS data to be freely redistributed and for images and measures derived from OASIS to be distributed using the same or different usage requirements. We encourage other data sharing groups to adopt similar open access DUAs.